Music. Welcome to Two Cents Worth. I am your host, Ryan DeFaber. I am back from my hiatus. Been busy, personal, professional work. We have been doing a remodel of the house, our kitchen being remodeled. We brought a designer in to help us rearrange our downstairs, paint coloring. The cabin is being redone, new countertops, furniture rearrangement, new furniture, all these things. Been busy with the kids and marriage. We had basketball season.
That's now done. Soccer's kicking off. Baseball's kicking off. Professional life, work has been busy. Been traveling, been adding new customers to my portfolio as well as new people that will work for me. So been busy all around, but I am back and I'm back with a few new episodes.
Today we're going going to be talking about self-affirmation and confidence, some of the things that I do, some of the things that I try to avoid, and some of the things I wish some of those people around me would also do. Because I do see more and more, and I want to instill this in my, especially in my children, I do see more and more of this comparison type mentality.
And I think a lot lot of that comes from social media in regard to seeing these people's highlights of their lives and thinking, oh my God, these people have it all together. They have everything I want. They have it all. They have it all figured out. And then if you actually, you know, peel the layers of the onion back and actually see what their life actually is behind the scenes or how they are mentally, it really isn't all that great.
And so what I try to avoid is that full comparison to people that I see on social media. What I try and take from that though is, okay, what are they doing? Do they have, let's talk about just gym wise, right? If I'm following somebody that goes to the gym and they're posting videos and they're in good shape and I go, okay, how do I take that?
If that is my goal to kind of not compare myself to them, but more so have some type of similarity to them in regard to either body type, discipline, whatever. How do I take what they're doing from what I see and implement that into my life to achieve the goals that I have, right? So I do take some of that from social media. What I don't ever do is compare my life to anyone else's life, myself to anybody else. What I will do though is take some motivation from that, right?
And I think I think that's where we struggle sometimes is where we go and we look at the people's lives. Again, going back to social media, we look at them and go, man, they have it all figured out. I want to take everything that they do. That's not realistic. That's not your life. Take control of your life, get some motivation from them, build some discipline there. But here's the other thing too, is you're in control.
And I think from a confidence perspective and a self-affirmation perspective, what I do, and this works for me, is I look at myself in the mirror, right? Get dressed, ready for the day. I look at myself in the mirror and I go, you look good. You look good. I tell myself that out loud. Hey, man, you look good because I believe when you look good, you feel good. And when you feel good, you look good. And so I'm hitting the gym five to six days, sometimes seven times a week.
Am I as disciplined as I once was early in my 20s and 30s and my teens? No, but I'm still doing those things and I'm sitting there going, OK, hey, man, at 39, almost 40, you're doing more than a lot of people your similar age. You're putting in the work. You're disciplined. Can you be more disciplined? Sure. But life gets in the way, right? Like I was just mentioning, would I have more time to do more if I didn't have...
So busy at work, doing the stuff with the kids, actually being married and actually putting effort into my marriage. Yeah, sure. Friendships, all that stuff. Absolutely. But what I do, like I said, every morning, get myself dressed. I look at myself and I go, you look good. And that's how I start my day off. And that just saying you look good out loud changes my whole mentality. I might have had a bad morning. I might've had a bad day the day before,
but I look at myself and I say, Hey man, you look good. You're putting in the work you're trying. And we just keep going. Today's a new day. If you failed the day before, or if you felt like you didn't put the best effort in the day before, whatever the past, that's why it's called the past. You can't change it. It's done. Right. I've talked about this before in regard to my son asking me, dad, you have any regrets in in life. Absolutely not.
Because if you have regrets in life, it means you want to change where your situation is at in the present moment. And I don't, what I have control of is what I do today and moving forward.
So no, I don't regret anything that's gotten me here because I look at all the positive things that are in my life and talking to yourself and looking at yourself and having that self-affirmation and going, Hey, as long as you know that you are doing the best that that you can and that you have the ability to potentially do more and continue this path and also continue what you're doing today repeatedly and have that discipline and knowing that, hey, there's going to be bumps in the road.
There's going to be setbacks. But knowing that, hey, I'm going to do the best for myself and the people around me. You look good, you feel good. I'm confident in myself. And that's where the confidence comes in as well. It's like, you know, one thing that I hate for my wife sometimes is that she's not confident in either the way she looks or the way she feels. And I tell her all the time, I'm like, you're beautiful. I think you're smoking hot. And I tell her that all the time.
I'm like, Lindsay, like you look amazing. Wear that. No, I don't think I look good. And I'm like, Like you look great. And in all, in all honesty, my opinion should probably weigh more than anybody else's that we're going to potentially go to dinner and see, or a bunch of people we don't even know. Like, I think that's one thing that certainly I have a better grasp on than my wife does is the fact of not giving a shit about what other people think about you, right?
Like I am who I am. I'm in control of who I am. And as long as my wife's opinion of me is positive and my children's opinion of me is positive and my closest friends and my family's opinion of me is positive, that's what really matters. A random person that's sitting at a table next to me at dinner, I could give a fucking shit about, to be honest with you. And so for her, like I always try and tell her, I'm like, you look great. Like I lust after you. I love you. I think you look incredible.
You've birthed two children. Your body has been. Through a lot and yet you're still disciplined and at heading towards 40, you look incredible for what we've put ourselves through in regards to our lives. We're not college kids anymore. We are not training six, eight hours a day. Our bodies change and look at us where we are today. And, and, you know, I, again, I see people around me, the similar age that don't have that type of discipline.
I see, you know, people kind of unfortunately letting themselves go. And I'm like, You have one life, take care of your body and it'll take care of you. And I want my wife to have that confidence and I see her and I want her to understand just some self-affirmation. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you look good out loud and don't compare yourself to others. Just know that what you're doing is hard and you're a working mom. We're busy, just like I'm busy.
She has a very demanding job. She still works out four to five times a week. She just worked on training for a long run of 15K. Putting our bodies through these stresses does have benefits. And I think for her, the self-affirmation piece of it is something I'd certainly want her to work on because I've seen positive changes in myself with me doing it and not sitting there going and looking back at pictures of myself five years ago when I might have been 10 pounds lighter
and maybe I looked better. But you know what? Hey man, that was five years ago. Things have changed. Where are you at today? And do you still feel good about yourself and what you're doing? And I do. I haven't changed my workout routine, you know, in regard to not going right. Still staying consistent with that. Sometimes maybe the eating or the adult beverages may, may take a little more than they should.
But certainly this year I've been working on that too and not drinking as much and trying to have a better balance, still kind of that 80-20 diet ratio of like 80% healthy and good and the 20% where sometimes, you know, you want to have a Philly cheesesteak and some fries, you know, whatever it might be, but still looking at yourself in the morning or even throughout the day and going, hey, you look good. You look good. You're working hard. You're doing what you need to do.
Can some things change? Sure. But we'll start implementing those, you know, as time goes and put together a plan and set your goals and set some timelines around those goals. But also know, like, if you're not happy in your situation, you have the ability to change that situation. And I just want to see more people have more confidence in themselves. And, you know, for me too, with being a father, I want to instill confidence in myself.
So my children see that I want them to see the self-affirmation that I'm putting towards myself. So they see that. And I hope that a lot of you will get some motivation out of this and some, maybe a light bulb going off and going, yeah, you know what? You're right. Like maybe I am too hard on myself at times. I am working hard. I do understand that there's going to be road bumps. I do understand there's going to be some setbacks, but I'm still going.
I'm not giving up and don't want to compare myself to where I was. Like if I looked at myself when I was 18 and I look at myself now where I'm almost 40 and I'd be like, oh man, I wish like I was 18 again. I don't like that's not realistic. But again, I have the opportunity to continue to change and evolve and adapt myself to where I need to be and where I want to move my goals towards and what I want to actually accomplish year after year.
Right now, heading into being 40 in a couple months, I want to be a healthy 40-year-old. And again, I mentioned, I look around when I travel and I see and I go to the gym and I still stay disciplined. I see a lot of people that don't go to the gym. And I see a lot of people my age that aren't as disciplined. And I see a lot of people my age that aren't healthy. And I want to not be in that situation.
I want to always be healthy. So for me, the self-affirmation piece of it, the confidence aspect of it is a mentality thing and not a comparison thing. Not going on to social media and comparing myself to somebody I don't know or even somebody that I do know, right? That's their life. This is my life. I'm in control of my life. life. How do you feel? Do you feel crappy? Then change it. Do you feel good? I feel good. Do you look good? Then I look good.
Are some things you still want to tweak? Yes, because here's the thing. I'm never satisfied. I'm never content in where I am. And I think that's important too, for a self-affirmation and confidence perspective. Being confident in yourself today is fantastic. Never get content, right? Always continue to work, always continue to be healthy and take make the most out of life.
That's today's episode, talking about self-affirmation, talking about confidence, looking at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself that, hey, you look good, you feel good. Building that confidence for yourself, understanding where you are in life, understanding all of the internal and external factors that you have going on. And if you want to make a change, make a change, right? Like I mentioned, cutting back on my my drinking. That is one change I wanted to make going into the new year.
I was drinking a lot socially and I wanted to change that. And I have, and you see the benefits of it. I don't feel so bad on a Saturday or Sunday morning. I'm getting more out of my workouts throughout the week. And I'm feeling better to where if I don't work out on a Saturday, I go, you know what? It's not that big of a deal because now I don't need to work off a thousand calories worth of drinking than I did last night because I didn't do that.
So you have the opportunity in front of you to make a change mentally, to tell yourself that you're a good person, be happy, build that confidence, tell yourself these things, and say them out loud. I saw that some people don't have an internal dialogue. Couldn't believe that. I talk to to myself internally all the time, but sometimes externally is, is an as important and just looking at yourself in the mirror, right?
When you're about to either walk out the door or when you're going to go to work or go, go do a workout, take a big breath of air, puff your chest out and go, I look good and I'm going to fucking crush today. And I think that's what has worked for me.
And I hope some of this stuff that you hear today, maybe you start implementing in your life and you start feeling better and start taking control of every day and where you're at in your life and that self-affirmation and that drive and that confidence will continue to build and you'll continue to adapt as a person and you'll continue to evolve as a person and you'll get better and better and better. Because again, folks, we have one life.
This is it. We're not giving any others. So take advantage of it. Be happy. Be confident in yourself. Look at yourself. Tell yourself you're fucking awesome. You know, do I wish there were some things I would change? Like I'm looking at myself right now in the mirror. Do I wish I had more hair? Absolutely. But you know what? This is the situation I've been given. I can't change the fact that I don't have as much hair as I once did.
But even the way that I am today, where I have gray hair around the sides and the back and it's salt and pepper, you know, my wife says, she goes, well, I like that look. I like your hair short. I like the way that, you know, it blends like that because that's just how I've evolved as a person where I am today. day. And you know what? I look good and I feel good. And I hope you do the same. Hope you have a great day.
Again, sorry for the hiatus. We're going to have a few episodes coming out, like I mentioned about gym, culture, etiquette, misconceptions, all those things. Might be a little quick series, couple of episodes there. So I hope you enjoy it. As always, share, like, post that you've been listening to the podcast. Let everybody know about it. Let's build this thing. Let's continue to drive this forward and have a great day.